


Reconciliation

by Banshi13



Series: Season 10 Codas [3]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: 10.13, Coda, Family, Fluff, M/M, Pre-Slash, uncle! Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:15:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22285450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Banshi13/pseuds/Banshi13
Summary: Danny chewed on his bottom lip.  “I think you might have a point, about what you said earlier today about being ashamed.”“You want me to talk to him?”“Uh, no, I do not want you to talk to him, I can talk to my own kid, but maybe just kind of be there?  Sitting on the chair by the sofa?  Quietly?” Danny shoved his hands in his pockets.Steve looked at him, eyebrow raised; Danny’s shoulders dropped with the sigh that escaped his mouth.“Fine, yes, I want you to talk to him.”
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Series: Season 10 Codas [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604164
Comments: 13
Kudos: 208





	Reconciliation

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t care if we got only ten minutes of Steve and Danny in 10.13, it was by far the best part of the episode for me. Domestic McDanno is forever the way to my heart. I did also enjoy Lou’s story line – who else would catch a murder case on the golf course but him? And the use of Paul (Alex’s stunt double) as the bad guy and the chase sequence with the song ‘Money, Money, Money’ playing in the background was hilarious.
> 
> But Steve going to Charlie’s school with Danny to have a parent/principal meeting about Charlie getting bullied? Steve playing an instrumental role in how Danny and Luke (the father of the kid who was bullying Charlie) handled the situation? The look on Steve’s face when Danny was recounting how his divorce affected him as he was giving advice to Luke? 
> 
> I. Was. In. Love.
> 
> So, enjoy this fluffy, sweet, domestic coda, now with an extra serving of McDanno and Uncle!/Daddy! Steve :D
> 
> _Disclaimer: Hawaii Five-0 and the characters found within the series are owned by CBS Productions, K/O Paper Products, and 101st Street Productions. No profit is being made off of this work._

**Hawaii Five-0**

“So, Blake turned out to be a pretty cool little guy, huh?” Danny shut the door as Charlie walked back into the house from saying goodbye to his newest friend. “What do you think, you think you want to hang out with him again?”

“Yeah, he was really fun. Danno, can Blake come over next weekend and play video games?”

“Video games, huh?” Danny touched a hand to his son’s shoulder, leading him over to Steve’s couch. “What’s wrong with running around outside, getting some fresh air?”

“We did that today.”

“Okay,” Danny sat down. “Well, we’ll talk about what we do next weekend a little later, but for now, come on up here,” he patted the couch next to him, “sit next to me, I want to talk to you about something.” Charlie climbed up, and Danny waited for him to get settled, listening to the sounds of dishes sloshing about in the kitchen from Steve washing them, cleaning up after the snack he’d fixed the kids. “I just want to make sure that you’re okay, that you’re doing okay with me and Mom not spending so much time together anymore. I mean, I know we were all together a lot a few months ago and that’s kind of stopped now, so, if there’s anything you want to talk about or ask me, I am all ears.”

“I’m okay, Danno.” Charlie looked up at him, and Danny could see that he was bright eyed, happy. He took his kid’s word for it.

“Okay, that’s good. So uh, about Blake; there’s something else I want you to know.” Danny took a breath, mulling over how to verbalize the thoughts that had been running through his head since he and Steve had sat down with Charlie’s principal and had gotten the news that his kid was being bullied at a place that was supposed to be a safe, welcoming space for every kid who stepped foot through the doors. “You know Blake’s going through a hard time, and I know that’s why he decided to act out, target you, and I’m glad we were all able to get that taken care of today. But,” Danny held up a finger, “I want you to know that if anyone else is bothering you at school, or bullying you, stealing your stuff, I want you to know that you can always, _always_ come to me. You don’t have to go through that alone. Okay?”

Danny watched as Charlie absorbed his words and nod his head, like so often kids did when they were understanding what they were being told but weren’t certain about following through on it. Danny felt the corners of his lips tug down just slightly. “You feel like telling me why you didn’t come to me about Blake?”

Charlie halfway shrugged an arm, and there were many responses Danny would take from his kids – a happy shriek, a slamming door, even a sarcastic eye roll would sometimes do the trick – but Danny would never accept a shrug of the shoulders as an acceptable answer to any question he asked either Charlie or Grace. “C’mon, don’t do that, buddy, talk to me. What, did you think I’d be mad at you? Blame you or something?” Danny watched Charlie play with the hem of his shirt, saw his kid’s eyes dart from the red and blue striped shirt, to the couch, to Eddie who had just padded out from the kitchen which meant Steve was almost done and would be joining them shortly. He slipped his hand down and snapped his fingers; Eddie immediately trotted over, resting his chin on the couch cushion and looked up between Danny and Charlie, eyes begging for scratches and pets which Danny easily obliged.

“Tell you what, sit tight with Eddie for a little bit, okay?” Danny pushed himself up from the couch and headed into the kitchen, where he found Steve on the losing end of a battle with water and Dawn dish soap. “I thought you were almost done in here.”

“Yeah, well, the grill grate didn’t want to co-operate, and I was scrubbing it, lost control of the sponge, one thing led to another…” Steve shrugged helplessly, surrounded by water on the counter, dripping down onto the cabinet and from there, onto the floor. Danny was certain if he looked over past the prep island that he’d see suds near the stove. 

Steve heaved a sigh, giving up on the grate for the moment. “Luke and Blake leave out okay?”

“Yeah, uh, they did, but I’m trying to get Charlie to tell me why he didn’t tell me about the bullying and it’s not going well,” Danny chewed on his bottom lip. “I think you might have a point, about what you said earlier today about being ashamed.”

“You want me to talk to him?”

“Uh, no, I do not want you to talk to him, I can talk to my own kid, but maybe just kind of be there? Sitting on the chair by the sofa? Quietly?” Danny shoved his hands in his pockets. Steve looked at him, eyebrow raised; Danny’s shoulders dropped with the sigh that escaped his mouth.

“Fine, yes, I want you to talk to him.”

Danny waited for Steve to clean up the kitchen and then followed him back out to the living room, happy to see that Eddie had decided to jump up on Charlie’s right side rather than steal his seat. He reclaimed his spot on the sofa while Steve perched on the recliner angling towards both of them. “Okay, so we got me, we got Uncle Steve, you got Eddie,” Danny propped his elbow up on the back of the couch, just watching Charlie for a few moments. Unlike Grace, who had been willing to express her every feeling and thought to her father when she was little, Danny had learned that Charlie did things in his own time; the more he felt pressured, the more he folded in on himself. In that regard, Charlie was his mother, through and through.

So, Danny chose to make small talk with Steve about moving more of his stuff into Junior’s room (“You know he’s coming back, Danny, right?”) and about meeting up with that Thomas Magnum guy and his team the following weekend for beers (“Tell him I want a crack at that Ferrari, Steve.”), until Charlie interrupted with a tap on Danny’s leg.

“Did kids bully you when you were a kid, Dad?”

And, oh. For whatever reason, Danny’s keen detective brain had failed him, because he hadn’t expected that question. But Danny had never lied to his kids and he wasn’t about to start now. “Sometimes I got teased, yeah. I was smaller than most of the kids my age, and you know, when you’re a boy, that sometimes makes you an easy target. But,” Danny scratched the side of his cheek, “I got older and grew a little bit, and sometimes, you know… I was the putz in the situation, and I was the one doing the teasing and being mean to other kids. Sometimes, it was to get back at the kids who’d been mean to me, but sometimes it was just me being a jerk.”

“Why?”

Danny had been detained by the CIA (twice), shot in the chest, and exposed to sarin gas, among other unsavory and plainly unentertaining experiences in his life, and none of them compared to the embarrassment and shame he himself was feeling explaining how he’d used to be a little like Blake sometimes when he was Charlie’s age. “I don’t know, really; I guess maybe because people had been mean to me, and so I wanted to be mean back?”

“Did they leave you alone?”

“Sometimes they did, yeah,” Danny nodded, rubbing his hands together. “And eventually, by the time I got to middle school, we’d all moved on and we didn’t bother each other anymore.”

Charlie considered that, still running his little fingers through Eddie’s soft fur, who was still happily perched next to him and resting his head on the arm of the couch. “It’s weird thinking you got bullied.”

Danny frowned, looking over at Steve. “Why is it weird?”

“’Cause you’re really tough, and you’re a police officer. You catch bad guys and you take them to jail, and you wouldn’t be able to do that if people bullied you.” Charlie answered so matter-of-factly that Danny had to take a few seconds to collect himself.

“Well, uh…”

Thankfully, that was the moment Steve decided to enter the conversation. “Your dad’s one of the toughest people I know Charlie, honestly that I’ve ever met. But just because Danno and I go out and catch bad guys doesn’t mean we weren’t bullied or kids weren’t mean to us growing up. In fact, one of the hardest times in my life was when I went to military school. I got bullied pretty badly for a while there.”

“ _You_ did?” Charlie’s eyes were as large as saucers, and Danny couldn’t help but laugh quietly to himself. In all honesty, he’d practically had the same reaction to Steve telling him he’d suffered some bullying behaviors from his classmates, and at a military academy of all places. He had the utmost sympathy for the shock radiating from his mini-me.

“Yeah, I did. But I got through it. For me, people treating me like that, I learned that it said more about them than it did about me, and it toughened me up a little too.” Steve shrugged. “I’d never really experienced any of that before I left Hawaii for the military, and it was really, really hard for me for a while, but I got through it.”

“But the thing is, Charlie, your Uncle Steve, he got through it but he kinda had to get through it alone, you know?” Danny looked at Steve as he spoke, knowing just how raw Steve must have been those months after his mother had died, or ‘fake died’ as they’d later found out. And of course, the pestilence that was teenagers and young men high on their new military status and promised career paths hadn’t helped one iota. “But the good news is, you don’t have to go through that alone, okay? If something like this ever happens again, if another kid is bothering you, or if they steal your stuff or hurt you, you gotta tell me, okay? Because you’re the most important thing in the world to me, you and your sister.” Danny lifted a hand and brushed it over Charlie’s head, feeling silky soft strands flow through his fingers. “It’s my job to protect you, and I want you to help me do that, and the best way you can help me is if you tell me if someone’s bullying you or giving you a hard time, okay?”

Charlie nodded, starting at his lap. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Danno. I just…”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Danny didn’t need Charlie to say anything more. He got it, he truly did. “However you were feeling about it, that’s okay. I just need you to know that I’m never going tell you that you should take care of it yourself or that you should be able to defend yourself from something like that, okay? That’s my job for the time being, not yours.” Out of the corner of his eye, Danny could see Steve’s mouth working, wanting to say something, and he knew what Steve wanted to suggest. Yes, this time, with Blake and his father, things had been able to get worked out and it looked like Charlie and Blake were going to be able to move forward and even have a friendship. But Danny wasn’t stupid; there would eventually be a kid who would be worse than Blake and talking with the kid and his parents wouldn’t fix the problem.

“I tell you what, your Uncle Steve here, he’s pretty good at throwing punches, you know? How’s about we teach you how to defend yourself, just in case this ever happens again?”

Charlie seemed thrown by the idea, definitely interested, but Danny could also see crinkles of worry around his brown eyes. “But Mom wouldn’t let me take karate or anything else-”

“I’ll talk to Mom, don’t worry,” Danny soothed. “I’ll get that straight with her, but in the meantime, I’d feel better if you knew how to defend yourself if you ever needed to, and I think you’d feel better too, yeah?”

At his son’s very enthusiastic nod, Danny grinned. “Alright then. So, all you need to do is promise Uncle Steve here that you won’t beat him up too badly, and I’m sure he’ll be happy to teach you.” He watched as Charlie got out of his seat and met his uncle’s fist with a bump from his own.

“I’ll go easy on you, Uncle Steve.”

“I really appreciate that, Charlie,” Steve tried to look serious, as if Charlie was granting him a major concession, but Danny could tell that his partner was over the moon about this opportunity to spend some time with Charlie and teach him a few tricks as well.

Danny stood up. “Why don’t you two get started and I’ll look around for something for dinner – hey, is Tani coming back?”

“Nah, I think she was heading over to check on Koa, see how he was doing,” Steve shrugged a shoulder.

“Ah, say no more. You talk to her about Junior?”

“Yeah, she got a voicemail from him before he shipped out,” Steve stood up and tugged Charlie in front of him, marching him towards the back door. “This is the hard part about relationships with military guys – one day they’re here, and the next, they’re not. But she’ll be okay, I think. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

“Keep an eye on him,” Danny pointed at Charlie, who grinned up at him, and Danny was familiar with that grin. “He looks all sweet and innocent now, but I’ve wrestled a time or two with this kid; he plays dirty.”

Steve waved Danny off and led Charlie out the backdoor and onto the lush grass that was his backyard, Eddie on both of their heels. It was just a few minutes later when Danny had found some tuna and salmon in the fridge, had plated it and was walking out onto the lanai to lay the fish on the grill, that Steve’s startled yelp came from further down the lawn. Looking up, Danny could see Charlie lying flat on Steve’s chest, ‘pinning’ him as if he were a WWE wrestler. Eddie danced around the both of them, barking excitedly. As Steve got up and shot Danny a look, Danny could only smirk back, not bothering to hide his laughter.

“Told you, babe.”


End file.
